From my limited experience I have tried to humbly put forth some of my view
Dear Colleagues, I am in all agreement with Mr. Sukhdev Singh's point of view. The debate on Commercial Vs. Open Source LMS is very much a need of time, now. As a working librarian, I wish to share my experiences with you all, which may perhaps throw some light on the efforts of our Open Source software developers. Like every other university we had tried our hands at a commercial software and as Sukhdev rightly pointed out, our vendors simply fled the scene leaving us in a lurch. Loads of our data which was a result of hardwork and overtime of our staff got locked up and we could never retrieve that. It has been such a pain!! After lot of deliberations and doubtful expressions from our faculty members and authorities, we finally managed to convince them for an open source solution with Koha. A notable point is Koha is no doubt a very stable software with a strong community base. But its implemenattion and maintenance is not an easy job for all librarians, especially in India. It requires a high level understanding of the OS (if you wish to implemet on Linux platform) and several other features. We have to perform several other duties along with computerization, which do not allow us to completely concentrate solely on this job. While we were meddling with Koha's implementation, computer experts were also flown in to help us with installation, customization and for data migration. Still, the desired result could not be produced. At such a time NewGenLib was made open source. Having a tough time with computerization amidst growing annoyance of the users, we experimented with NewGenLib and it worked !! The software is so user friendly for installation, customization as well as maintenance. Contribution of the developer, Dr. Haravu and proactive support of his team, especially Mr. Siddartha is incredible. They are so responsive and are always ready to solve the problems. What do we librarians want? It is in this respect that I strongly support Sukhdev's views that a community based software will go a long way as per the requirements of an organization. But, its a matter of support from the library community. It is for our community to support such endeavours in order to keep ourselves strong and going. We should understand that support in terms of AMC and product promotion will help the software survive. When we are forced to pay whopping amounts of AMC to a commercial vendor, why not a nominal amount of AMC to a good samaritan? Another noteworthy point is - success of the software in a library depends upon the attitude of people on both sides - the developer and the implementor. We have to agree that there are many libraries in India who are still in computerization stage and face typical problems specific to each of their organizational set-up. The reason for opting and supporting NewGenLib when compared to Koha is the simplicity of the software, ease in data migration, support from the developers and above all it suits to the requirements of a typical Indian library system. Mr. Goudar's suggestion is worth considering that Inflibnet can think of collaborating with developers of NewGenLib for all these obvious reasons. It will surely be a win-win situation for both Inflibnet as well as NewGenLib, specially because of strong leaders on both fronts - Dr. Arora and Dr. Haravu. Their experience and expertise will definitely help in the ascent of library community. I am pleased to say that today we are tension-free and satisfied as our efforts in implementing an open source software have not only been appreciated by our authorities and welcomed by our users but are also being supported by every means. points. Apologies for any unforseen or unintentional remarks. Think open and have a great time! Kshema Mrs. Kshema Prakash Faculty Librarian - Gr I, Contact Person e-Journals (Library) & Coordinator - Distance Library Services DEI Central Library Dayalbagh Educational Institute (Deemed University) Dayalbagh, Agra 282 0110 Uttar Pradesh, India Mob: +919897190604 http://kshema-distancelibraryservices.blogspot.com/ -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.